eat misfortune,
nobly borne, gives to some natures, and feeling the eyes of many of
her old friends upon her, she graciously smiled and said that she was
delighted to receive so public a welcome. Then she took me by the hand.

"Do not worry, child," she said, "I have a daughter about your age,
which in itself would make me lenient towards one so young and pretty.
Where is your husband, dear? He has served me well in my absence, and I
should like to shake hands with him before I withdraw with my daughter,
to a hotel for the night."

I looked up; he was standing in the open doorway leading into the
drawing-room. He had recovered a semblance of composure, but the hand
fingering the inner pocket, where he kept his keys, showed in what a
tumult of surprise and doubt he had been thrown by this unaccountable
appearance of his prisoner in the open hall; and if to other eyes he
showed no more than the natural confusion of the moment, to me he had
the look of a secretly desperate man, alive to his danger, and only
holding himself in check in order to measure it.

At the mention she made of his name, he came mechanically forward, and,
taking her proffered hand, bowed over it. "Welcome." he murmured, in
strained tones; then, startled by the pressure of her fingers on his, he
glanced doubtfully up while she said:

"We will have no talk to-night, my faithful and careful friend, but
to-morrow you may come and see me at the Fifth Avenue. You will find
that my return will not lessen your manifest happiness." Then, as
he began to tremble, she laid her hand on his arm, and I heard her
smilingly whisper: "You have too pretty a wife for me not to wish my
return to be a benefaction to her." And, with a smile to the crowd and
an admonition to those about her not to let the little bride suffer from
this interruption, she disappeared through the great front door on
the arm of the man who for five years had held her prisoner in her own
house. I went back into the drawing-room, and the five minutes which
elapsed between that moment and that of his return were the most awful
of my life. When he came back I had aged ten years, yet all that time I
was laughing and talking.

He did not rejoin me immediately; he went up-stairs. I knew why; he had
gone to see if the door to the fourth floor had been unlocked or simply
broken down. When he came back he gave me one look. Did he suspect me? I
could not tell. After that, there was another blank in my